The UW Department of Family Medicine and Community Health’s (DFMCH) statewide residency programs and physician assistant program recently achieved significant approvals from their respective accrediting organizations.
“Being one of the first programs to obtain osteopathic recognition clearly demonstrates our department’s commitment to being a nationwide leader in osteopathic family medicine.”
—Mark Robinson, DO, DFMCH director of osteopathic medical education
Residency Programs Receive Osteopathic Recognition
In November 2015, the DFMCH’s statewide residency programs were approved for osteopathic recognition by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).
They were among the first 13 family medicine residency programs in the nation to receive the recognition.
Osteopathic recognition is an added qualification that residency programs can obtain from the ACGME. It demonstrates that a program offers residents osteopathic training that follows training guidelines outlined by the ACGME’s Osteopathic Principles Committee. Recognition also helps medical students assess how potential programs have incorporated osteopathic principles into their training curriculum.
The ACGME, along with the American Osteopathic Association and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, have been moving toward a single system of graduate medical education accreditation.
The ACGME is a national organization that reviews and accredits graduate medical education (residency and fellowship) programs, and the institutions that sponsor them, in the United States.
PA Program Reaccredited for 10 Years with No Citations
In September 2015, the UW-Madison Physician Assistant (PA) Program received continued accreditation for the next 10 years by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA).
The ARC-PA is the accrediting agency that defines the standards for PA education and evaluates PA educational programs within the United States to ensure their compliance with those standards.
The Commission reviewed the program’s materials and recommendations made after its site visit in April 2015. It made its reaccreditation recommendation with no citations, a phenomenal accomplishment that speaks highly to the strengths of the program and its faculty, staff and students.
A program that has successfully completed an accreditation review has in place the needed instructional, student support, and other services to assist students to achieve their educational goals. It means the program lives up to its promises: to a student, it means they can have confidence that a degree has value; to the public, it conveys confidence in the worth of the program.
“We are extremely proud of the program’s re-accreditation, especially that we were found to meet or exceed all accreditation standards. It speaks highly to the fact that we have an infrastructure of continuous self-assessment and self-improvement that makes us such a solid program. Accreditation requires an inordinate investment for everyone in the program and the exceptional result is certainly testament to our team’s hard work and our program’s strength.”
—Virginia Snyder, PhD, PA-C, PA Program director
Thanks and congratulations to everyone who worked so hard to prepare for the programs’ reaccreditation applications and site visits.
Published: January 2016